Portraits of Panem
by LenoreDeAmor
Summary: A series of oneshots giving portraits of the lives of people in the various districts of Panem. Read and Review please. Rated M just to be safe.
1. Dead Miner's Daughter

District Twelve: Dead Miner's Daughter

The cold wind wildly whipped around my threadbare skirt. Being barefoot in District Twelve during the winter is begging cruel Mother Nature for death. Never before did I think I could sink so low.

Twelve years ago, my father was killed in a mining explosion. Later that day, my mother gave birth to my little sister. Neither made it through the night.

I'm alone in this world with nothing but the wind to keep me company.

Every step I take down the worn path sends pain shooting up my leg. My feet have become a sickly shade of blue, cold and unfeeling as my soul. My destination is in sight. It begins to snow.

I've wandered through life ever since that day. At first, I suffered through treatment in the District's group home. I was abused every day, without reprieve. After a few months, I couldn't take the pain, so I ran. I drifted from stoop to stoop in town.

Sometimes, people would give me a piece of bread, an old coat, or even a warm cup of soup.

Sometimes, I would just be chased off the stoop.

A light flurry of icy flakes falls on my exposed skin, biting and stinging worse than tracker jacker stings. The wind picks up, peppering my face and arms with freezing white flakes.

Eventually, I learned how to live alone. I gathered berries and stuff from the woods at first, until I almost died from eating some poisonous mushrooms. The pain was unbearable. After that, I became desperate. I began to sell my body for anything, money, bread, clothes. It didn't matter.

I soon became the favorite of the local Head Peacekeeper, who pays me to visit him every Tuesday.

I knock on the door, dreading the events to come.

He opens the door, smiles at me. Warm light bathes my emaciated face as I squint into the brightness. I take a reluctant step inside, letting my worn clothes slip to the floor.

When the deed is done, I stumble out into the cold again on unsure legs, wobbly as a newborn colt.

I'm unwanted.

I'm a nuisance.

I'm trash. Neglected and left on the curb.

It's become dark, the sky sprinkled with twinkling stars. It's a beautiful night, the first snow of the New Year. It's been twelve years to the day. A star shoots across the sky, flashing brightly.

I know it is my parents and little sister watching over me. I smile and whisper "I love you" as I collapse to the ground and rejoin my family.


	2. To the Victor Goes the Nightmares

District Four: To the Victor Goes the Nightmares

It is the worst nightmare of everyone in District Four. Drowning. It almost never happens because we are taught to swim before we can walk.

But some are just that unlucky.

Ever since I won the Games, the nightmares have been relentless. I dream of them- the fallen tributes.

The boy from Nine with the cold grey eyes.

The girl from Seven with the kind smile and the delicate laugh.

The boy from Eight with the bright red hair.

They visit me in my dreams.

And not just them, the tributes who died at my hand but my fellow careers, even the bloodbath tributes whose names I never bothered to learn, their faces are forever burned into my memory. The screams of those I killed and those whose deaths I was present for act as the soundtrack for my nightmares.

The nightmare always starts the same. I am in a white room with no windows or doors.

I am dressed in my tribute uniform, a deep blue spandex jumpsuit and black combat boots.

A tribute appears, dressed in white.

I am holding some type of weapon. Sometimes it's a bow, some days it's a knife, and on some occasions, it's my specialty- a trident. I scream at them to run, because I have lost control of my body.

Against my will, I aim at them.

I never miss.

They don't bleed red, they bleed black. They don't stop bleeding, even when they die. When one dies, another appears and the cycle begins again. The room slowly begins to fill with blood, and there is no way to drain it.

The first tribute is always the girl from One, my best friend in the arena and runner up. I had to kill her to save myself. I wish I would've let her kill me instead.

The nightmares always end with the boy from Twelve, who my district partner killed in a particularly brutal way. The boy was set on fire. And fire is by far, the worst way to go.

By the time I see the boy from Twelve, the blood in the room has risen to my chest and soon it covers me completely.

I try to swim as I have been taught but it doesn't help as the ink-like blood obscures my view and chokes me. My uniform weighs me down, restricting my efforts.

It tastes like sleep syrup. And there's no escaping it. I experience the sensation of drowning longer usual each night. At first, it was for only a minute or two.

Now, twenty years after the Games, it's thirty minutes.

I experience my worst fear for thirty minutes each night. It makes the rest of life seem dull in comparison.

I am not the only one this happens to.

I talk to my neighbors, the others who occupy the houses of the Victor's Village. They also have nightmares.

At night, we fear our own dreams.

We are supposed to be the people that everyone else in the District aspires to be.

But do the Victors really win anything at all?


End file.
